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Updating the National Academy of Medicine ME/CFS prevalence and economic impact figures to account for population growth and inflation, 2021, Jason
- Thread starter John Mac
- Start date
rvallee
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Taking the low-end of $36B per year, with the US representing approx. 20% of the world's GDP means roughly $180B per year (with a high over ~$250B). Obviously economic productivity is not evenly distributed but taking the lowest estimate mostly takes care of that.
That means about $1T every 5-7 years. If we set the clock at the mid-80's, being very generous going with the time medicine paid attention to it, rather than when it should have paid attention to it, we have about 3 decades. That makes it a bare minimum of $4T in wasted economic activity.
The sum total of relevant funding to address this >$4T economic disaster has been about $100M give or take, accounting for the fact that most of that investment was explicitly wasted on fairy tales and that overall investment were so low they were mostly wasted, roughly the same way not putting enough fuel in a rocket will simply see it crash down without reaching orbit.
Not even taking account of the immense human suffering, how many multi-trillion dollar problems exist out there that can be fixed with not much more than $1B in direct annual funding that would eventually cease once breakthroughs solve the problem entirely? In fact fixing most of that problem doesn't even require direct investments, simply ending the state of systemic discrimination would cut it in half, at least once it's put into practice.
Contrary to popular belief, denying chronic illness is not cheap. In fact it may just be one of the single most expensive decisions ever made. Saving pennies out of one pocket only to spend crisp hundred dollaroos out the other is the exact opposite of smart economics.
It's amazing to think that not only are trillions in economic activity wasted entirely, medicine has actually paid money, not much but still, to guarantee that we lose even more in the end. We are literally paying more to lose more. Like a casino where the player never ever wins, but the gambler is completely addicted to the shiny gold stars they give each other so whatever, let's just keep burning the equivalent GDP of large countries while destroying millions of lives. Apparently it's the smart medicine thing to do, or at least it's the BPS way.
That means about $1T every 5-7 years. If we set the clock at the mid-80's, being very generous going with the time medicine paid attention to it, rather than when it should have paid attention to it, we have about 3 decades. That makes it a bare minimum of $4T in wasted economic activity.
The sum total of relevant funding to address this >$4T economic disaster has been about $100M give or take, accounting for the fact that most of that investment was explicitly wasted on fairy tales and that overall investment were so low they were mostly wasted, roughly the same way not putting enough fuel in a rocket will simply see it crash down without reaching orbit.
Not even taking account of the immense human suffering, how many multi-trillion dollar problems exist out there that can be fixed with not much more than $1B in direct annual funding that would eventually cease once breakthroughs solve the problem entirely? In fact fixing most of that problem doesn't even require direct investments, simply ending the state of systemic discrimination would cut it in half, at least once it's put into practice.
Contrary to popular belief, denying chronic illness is not cheap. In fact it may just be one of the single most expensive decisions ever made. Saving pennies out of one pocket only to spend crisp hundred dollaroos out the other is the exact opposite of smart economics.
It's amazing to think that not only are trillions in economic activity wasted entirely, medicine has actually paid money, not much but still, to guarantee that we lose even more in the end. We are literally paying more to lose more. Like a casino where the player never ever wins, but the gambler is completely addicted to the shiny gold stars they give each other so whatever, let's just keep burning the equivalent GDP of large countries while destroying millions of lives. Apparently it's the smart medicine thing to do, or at least it's the BPS way.
Forbin
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
It's like losing $1,111 each year for 36 years (1985-2021), and spending 2.8 cents per year on nonsense to try to find a way to plug the hole... and failing.
Dolphin
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Full text available at:
https://solvecfs.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Jason-Mirin_Prevalence_econ_update.pdf
https://solvecfs.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Jason-Mirin_Prevalence_econ_update.pdf
RedFox
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
$36-51B per year, and just in the US. Or roughly $30-40k per person per year, mostly in lost wages.
We can present this in multiple ways to get a better feel of the scale. It's 0.17% or roughly 1/600 of US GDP. If the average person with ME suffers for 40 years, that's $1.2-1.6 million per person.
Plus the level of human suffering, which can't be calculated, but considering the millions suffering, the degree of disruption of normal life they experience, the length of time they suffer, and the degree of disbelief they experience, it's certainly on par with a major war or famine, just geographically distributed and disbelieved enough to be nearly invisible.
We can present this in multiple ways to get a better feel of the scale. It's 0.17% or roughly 1/600 of US GDP. If the average person with ME suffers for 40 years, that's $1.2-1.6 million per person.
Plus the level of human suffering, which can't be calculated, but considering the millions suffering, the degree of disruption of normal life they experience, the length of time they suffer, and the degree of disbelief they experience, it's certainly on par with a major war or famine, just geographically distributed and disbelieved enough to be nearly invisible.